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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward script. It commonly acts as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your team in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who oversaw the most dramatic improvement receives the prize. In practice, it sparks an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or simply the most shocking shock.

However the current race is profoundly different. The pool of candidates is unusually talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning division winners fading and recent underperformers improving in unison. In an normal year, a coach leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a turbulent and thrilling season, he's competing with several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, Williams has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent dominance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to conjure big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Almost each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the organization with the immense pressure he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a normal season, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. But the current isn't a normal campaign!

Where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But he falls short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the leadership stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. From the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. Yet he has pulled the entire group and everything together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still